Alexander Chee - The Queen of the Night

You would never forgive yourself, I said. So we cannot marry. You will thank me one day.

I let myself reach out and touch his brow, and he moved against my hand until he kissed my palm. I leaned in then, as if to kiss his ear, and my hair fell around us like a hood. I pushed my finger against his lips.

I said then, in the faintest whisper against his ear, The Prince, he is sending me away.

He turned his head and looked at me, still pressed to my hand. There was death in his eyes, but not for me.

§

Back in my apartment, the Prince waited for me.

At his instruction, evidently, the maids had already drawn me a bath, and I stepped into it as he watched.

Did I do as you asked? Am I free? I asked.

You have won your freedom, he said. He was smiling a thin, thin smile.

He withdrew from his coat an envelope and set it on the bureau by the tub.

Thank you, I said, and stood to check through the contents — my citizenship, the record of the bank draft and the account’s number, the deed to the apartment.

My Serene Highness, a word? I had used his formal address to charm him, and he nodded, smiling.

I insist, he said. Speak freely.

The day will come when my life won’t be worth so much to you, I said. I know you imagine you can kill me at will. And it may be you can. But you should not.

Why not? he asked, amused. What could kill you? You are the deathless one; you have nothing to fear from a mortal like me.

I didn’t answer this question. I held my arms up to be scrubbed by the maids, and as I watched, even under the hot water, I could see myself turn only a faint pink.

Deathless or all death, who could say? he asked.

I shrugged — we both knew he could say.

Do you love him?

You know I do, he said.

You imagine I am an obstacle to your love for him, I said. And I am. But I am a greater obstacle to you dead.

He laughed. Why speak like this, on this happy occasion? he asked. And risk offending me?

I mean no offense, I said. It is a happy occasion. I will leave shortly for Paris, and he will now marry a wife he can bring to court, one who will never suspect you.

Yes, he said. You will live on in his memories. He will live on here. And so why must you live?

And so I knew I was right to do as I did.

He will come to Paris again someday to sing, I said. And to see me sing.

I could see in his eyes he knew I was right.

You are very alike, I said. He kills everything that stands in the way of what he loves. You as well, I am sure. And so I know you will try to do this as I leave today, or later when you imagine he will have forgotten. But he will not forget me. He will expect reports of me, reports of the glory of my debut in Paris, my career. He will go one day to see me for himself. And if he does not hear these stories, if I am not there when he comes to Paris to see me, and tragedy befalls me instead, he will go to discover who was the author of my death. And if it was you, he will learn it was you. He will come then to kill you himself. And he will.

I paused as the maids finished and I stepped out of the water, steam rising around me in the cold air as I stepped into the towels waiting for me.

Or you will kill him as he tries.

The towels were switched for a robe, and the brushing of my hair began, which told me I was nearly ready to be dressed.

The Prince was silent.

It’s so rare when the world allows you to be with the one you love, I said. Enjoy each other as you can.

He met my eyes now at last, as if after all that scrutiny he finally understood what I was.

With that, I entered the dressing room. When I emerged, there was no sign of him. I left, I did not look back, and there were no more good-byes.

§

There are times I remember my question, the one I had been so afraid to ask of the Comtesse: How does one become a woman on whom a man would settle 500,000 francs?

Now I knew. My life was now the answer to this question, too.

I would never be able to say I had avenged anyone that day I left for Paris.

I remember how I crossed the landscape, still broken from the war, and took out the scroll and the other papers from time to time, if only to believe them.

I could not make war as they had, I could not burn cities as they had, I could not kill their women and their sons. I could only rob from them a little of the sweetness and sureness they felt as I left. That I could do.

I was not followed as I made my way back to Paris; I was not stopped. My papers were accepted with a salute at the border — I wore the medal that far. I could feel in the air at the station, on the train, all the way to the border and then again once I was over it; I could feel it as I kept on right to the door of the avenue de l’Opéra apartment and stood at last, with some amazement, before the falcon statue on its pedestal just inside the door where it commanded the entrance. A note read Please be our falcon .

This gift from the Prince seemed at first more like a tomb marker, but soon, when I passed its smooth dark stone surfaces, I knew it marked my life, not my death; it told me of how I had made my way past all of my mysteries, had reached, past all hope, the secret architect of my life — and had won from him and his agents this freedom, such as it was.

I had set my enemies against one another and won for myself a place I could live in relative peace. Each day I lived after that was a day won from the bargains struck that morning so long ago. But I suppose I also waited to hear for news of their mutual destruction.

This was the balance I had feared disturbed, then. And the amber I spoke of at the start of my tale, the one I lived inside, the one I hoped to break free of, was the waiting I had inflicted on myself. That long act of listening for either the signs of my victories or the footsteps of my killers — a listening that would endure so long I would forget my purpose, until the day Simonet and his novel appeared, and I was sure I heard in his stories that night at the ball the sound of my killers coming at last for me.

I DEBUTED AT LAST in the role of Amina in Bellini’s La Sonnambula in the fall season of the Théâtre-Italien in Paris in 1872. Amina, the beautiful orphan sleepwalker who sleepwalks her way into the bed of a stranger, losing her fiancé to the ensuing misunderstanding. Her climactic aria, “ Non credea mirarti ”—“I didn’t believe I’d see you”—is among the most beautiful in all of Italian opera and wins him back. This is the song she sings while walking through her town in a dream of grief, ending on the roof of that mill, where she wakes to find herself in her fiancé’s arms. He had been passing by, off to marry another woman, and when he sees her, he finally believes her and rushes to rescue her from certain death.

The aria demands tremendous delicacy and range — she is grieving, raging at her fate, in love, ultimately despairing of all hope, unaware she is in terrible danger until she wakes to her rescue, exultant. I returned to scrupulously studying the role with Pauline again until then, and she cheered from the boxes. I was credited with bringing wit to a role not usually known for its humor. One reviewer even called me “tragedy’s soubrette,” the funny girl who knows the master’s house better than the master himself.

The crowd that evening laughed, roared, wept, and then, to my pleasure, rose to thunderous applause and shouts. Flowers pelted the curtains as they opened for our bows, and as the shouts for an encore increased, I performed one at the urging of the conductor, and then another, and another, in what felt like a fever.

After the performance, admirers surrounded my carriage, unhooked the horses, and tried to carry me through the streets, an honor reserved for only a few. My horses screamed and reared, though, as unfamiliar hands grabbed their reins; and when my driver whipped at the men to let go, they held on tighter instead, afraid of dropping me. I leapt from the carriage into the street, wheeled onto the back of one of my mounts, and rode away from the scene as the other three followed. My stunned suitors then finally dropped my carriage into the street and set after me.